


The Feral Spring

by I_prefer_the_term_antihero



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Lore Olympus Episode 129, Meta, Poetic, Spring, Stream of Consciousness, poetic prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27430330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_prefer_the_term_antihero/pseuds/I_prefer_the_term_antihero
Summary: Do you think spring is gentle? || A short stream-of-conciousness/meta-ish fic about the wilder aspects spring, inspired by Lore Olympus ep 129.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	The Feral Spring

**Author's Note:**

> I'll add more detail to this at some point but basically episode 129 made me think more deeply about Persephone in the context of being the goddess of spring, and why someone so soft and cheery could also be so wild...and this came out. 
> 
> I did specifically write this for Lore Olympus, but technically it works for just Greek Mythology, or even an original story if I remove the last line, so that's why it's tagged that way.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!! I'd really really appreciate it if you could comment and let me know if you did!!

Do you think spring is gentle? 

Many do. 

Flowers, bunnies and butterflies. Soft things. Cute things. Pretty things. That’s what spring is, yes? 

Quite literally sunshine and rainbows. 

Spring is this picture of life. Not like summer where things dry up, or autumn where the leaves begin to die, or winter where the world is a wasteland of white. No, spring is the one season where everything _lives_. 

Do you think life is gentle? 

That life comes softly into this good morning? That life doesn’t come kicking, screaming, and bloody?

That one kind of life won’t choke out another, just for that simple act: surviving?

Spring can be ravenous. Life can be clawing at the dirt, bursting at the seams, choking any life out that isn’t itself.

Flowers aren’t the only kind of life. There are weeds too, and thorns and thistles can grow just as easily as the pretty things, and better yet smother them. 

Not all life is pretty. 

Springtime may bring the picture of blissful, bountiful gardens, but what is a garden but beauty bought with the blood and sweat of the gardener? 

Beauty isn’t cheap. Not when it’s real. When it grows. When it lives.

And what about those gardens, who caretakers found them too hungry after all, and left them to grow, the pretties and uglies to devour each other without reserve? What about those gardens whose petunia thrones were overthrown by ivy and blackberries? All color strangled by green and black and brown.

Spring isn’t always colorful. There are plenty of springs in plenty of places across the sea that are nothing but grey, because the rain comes and it drenches out any hope for a bow. 

Spring can be sunshine and rainbows, yes.

But spring can also be a thorns, and a downpour.

In the end, spring is not a tame thing. 

Living is not a tame thing.

Spring, above all else, is wild. 

Wild as the horses on the plains of a new world. Wild as the tigers in the cold places one ought not invade. 

And wild things are dangerous. 

Summer may be searing, winter overbearing but nothing, nothing is quite as wild as the spring. Be it in rain or sun. 

After all, isn’t spring when the thunder comes? 

With those days of rain don’t they too often invite their friend, the lightning, who never comes without thunder? 

Doesn’t the wind slash at the roofs, and unearth the trees? Doesn’t the lightning shatter the best of them? 

When has that ever been gentle? 

Sure the sun comes after. Sure it makes the flowers grow. 

But don’t think that beauty, that life, wasn’t bought with the price of their brothers turned to ash. 

Life is beautiful. Living is not. 

Life may be color and laughter and sunlight. 

But living…living is sweat and regret. And sometimes you have to choke out someone else in order to survive. Sometimes those dead parts of you have to be pruned by the gardener so the rest of you can live. Sometimes the gardener leaves you behind, and you have to decide if you’re going to let the ivy overtake you. Sometimes you have to stand in the thunder.

Spring is not the housecat sitting daintily on the window, fur brushed smooth and silky. 

It’s the feral thing in the alleyway, fur matted and grimy, catching rats and clawing at creatures bigger and wilder just to survive. 

There are things about spring that are soft, that are bright, that are pretty, yes.

But spring had never been gentle.

…So why would its goddess be?


End file.
